Treating My Tweens to Two Summers in One

"What day is it?" my 11-year-old asked me the other night. We'd just returned from a short trip to Boston, this after a brief vacation in Baltimore. Earlier this summer, we'd visited Philadelphia, the Jersey Shore and New York City. So it's no wonder my son has no idea what day it is. We're starting to sound like an East Coast version of Johnny Cash's "I've Been Everywhere."

While in Boston, I took a picture of the Citgo sign in Kenmore Square and sent it to an old college friend, who had just last week received my photo of the Orioles and Red Sox playing ball in Camden Yards. She texted me, "Last week, Baltimore. Now, Boston. What are you doing?"

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I replied, "Getting two summers into one."

This time last summer, I was prepping for my fifth of six rounds of chemotherapy. We had postponed our trip to Baltimore, because I was too sick to go. I had made it to our annual family vacation to Wildwood on the Jersey Shore, but spent most of the week inside our rental condo, napping between episodes of "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List." I remember watching Griffin run out onto a stage before a theater filled with adoring fans and feeling very jealous. I wish I could run, I thought. And then I fell back asleep.

So when summer started this June, I was determined to make it much, much better than last summer, most of which I had spent either in a hospital bed or on our living room couch while contractors ripped through our house doing renovations and my sons went elsewhere with other kids' mothers.

But perhaps I should have cleaned out the living room, which I had abandoned as soon as construction on our new family room was done, thereby creating our own Room Where Time Stood Still. Every now and then, I peak in at the pile of Get Well cards, the empty gift bags and the pre-construction boxes of stuff from other rooms. And then I leave it there. I'm not over last summer yet. And I'm not done with this one.

So far, I've visited cousins and friends up and down the eastern seaboard, treating my children to museum trips, city tours, water park rides, restaurant dinners and hotel pools. We saw the Liberty Bell, The National Aquarium, Grand Central Station, the Wildwood boardwalk, the Boston Common and the bridge where the American Revolution began - the site of the "shot heard round the world."

I confess it was all my way of making it up to my kids for last summer. But it was also my way of making it up to myself. My own shot heard round the world was fired on June 6, 2007, when I found out I had cancer. And though the heavy firing in my battle has ended, the war is far from over: My next PET scan is scheduled for October.

Lucky for us, school starts two weeks later than usual this year due to construction on our school. This means I can cram even more of what should have been last summer into what is this summer. I think I'll leave the living room untouched a while longer. And when I get a chance, I'll send pictures from wherever we go.